Sneakily, each of the descriptions in the previous post correspond to four movements or groups that were present in the culture of 1st century Judea. I took some liberties with the descriptions with two objectives in mind; to offer them as contemporary approaches to culture (as I think we have groups of Christians in our culture who correspond to each of these options), and to trick you into picking one of the options that Jesus rejected!!! It was into the midst of the following spiritual/social/political options that Jesus entered:
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1) Zealots - This was a group who was fed up with the control of foreign powers and false leaders. They were committed to ushering in the Kingdom of God by means of force if necessary (and it was often necessary!). They were constantly fomenting rebellion, and rigorously opposed the Roman occupation of the Jewish homeland. Their posture toward the world was combative and antagonistic.
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2) Essenes - This was a group of people who were committed to living out the values of God's Kingdom. They felt like the best way to accomplish this was to abandon the evil and compromising culture of the day for a pure and godly community in the wilderness. The Essenes built a community in the desert where they could bring God's Kingdom in by leaving behind the people who would hinder it. Their posture towards the world was one of seclusion and retreat.
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3) Pharisees - This was a group who took it upon themselves to maintain the purity of the Jewish people. They held to a rigorous understand of purity, and they wanted to impose that standard upon all other Jewish people, whom they looked down upon as defiled. They believed that God's Kingdom would come when the Jewish people would turn from their dirty lives and enter into a life of holiness. They believed that they possessed this holiness and would dispense it to those who did not. Their posture towards the world was one of arrogance and disdain.
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4) Sadducees - This group had attached themselves to the political powers. They saw their only hope of maintaining their place as the cultural and economic elites as aligning themselves with authority in an attempt to gain it themselves. They were willing to let go of some of the things that God had done, and to deny some of the things that God had promised to do, in order to cement their relationship with the political authorities. Their posture towards the world was one of compromise and connivance.
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Jesus fundamental difference from those above lay in His understanding that God's blessing is always to be given away. These other groups saw God's blessing as theirs by right, they saw their status as 'God's Chosen People' as a reason to exclude others (the Romans, the sinners, the poor, the culture as a whole). Jesus realized that God wanted to breathe restoration into the world through Jesus. The others arrogantly assumed that God wanted to breathe privelege into them so that they could sit atop the world.
Jesus walked out a unique understanding of God's Kingdom. He did not look down on the less fortunates of the world, berating them for their poverty and ignorance like the Pharisees, nor did He choose to abandon the world to chaos and pain as the Essenes had. He chose rather to work to change the state of the world, to heal and emancipate, to resurrect and empower. His method for doing this, however, was not the violent force of the Zealot, nor was it to court the powers of the world, trading God's power for the impotence of worldly play-Kings as the Sadducees did.
Each of these four groups sought to define for themselves the Kingdom of God, usually reserving the place of honor in that Kingdom for people who (coincidentally) looked remarkably like they did. Each of these groups was willing to marginalize some other aspect of society to maintain their own place of primacy in the soon-to-be innaugerated Kingdom of God.
Jesus saw the Kingdom of God as God's good authority coming to those who were marginalized by these groups. His way of bringing the Kingdom was a sharp contrasting rebuttle to the ways listed above. Essentially, Jesus saw Himself as fulfilling God's purposes of putting things right in the world, He took upon Himself the calling of the Nation of Israel, to be a light to the world and a blessing to the nations. Jesus entered into the broken places to bring healing, taking the brokenness and suffering upon Himself so that others could recieve from Him the life of the Spirit. He was not passive, but He was peaceful; He was not compromising, yet He was compassionate; He did not run from the world, nor did He fight it; He embraced the world, with all of its pain and alienation, despair and violence, and He simultaneously embraced heaven, with all of its beauty and purpose, power and joy.
It is to this subversive and provokative way that Jesus beckons us. He bids us, "Come and die with me, so that you might live, and others will live with us... We will bring heaven to earth, and God's Good News to those who are in desparate need."
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